Judy Fiskin: On Photography, at the Chicago Art Institute

Born in Chicago and currently based in Los Angeles, Judy Fiskin is best known for her series of intimately scaled black-and-white photographs of Southern Californian architecture and landscapes. In 1997 she developed a condition that made it difficult to stand in the darkroom for long periods of time, and she began working largely in video. 

This selection of three videos celebrates the artist’s recent gift to the museum of many of her video works and demonstrates Fiskin’s frank and often humorous observations on art and life. Diary of a Midlife Crisis (1997), one of her earliest videos, follows the artist’s shift from producing analog photographs to moving images and surfaces the absurdity and sentimentality of art making and aesthetic hierarchies. The video conflates her feeling stuck as an artist with her fear of moving the video camera.